I am currently in meetings with young leaders from around the United States. We have been discussing how to engage our culture in missions. The discussion has been very engaging and refreshing. I think I am just excited to still be considered a "young" leader. Ha. Ha.
I'd love your ideas on what you think the future "shape" of our Christ-cause can look like. We have to share the message of Christ to the world! "How" we do effectively is a huge question! I have meetings for one more day, so please share thoughts as soon as you can. We have to "Go Global"!
Bruce Howell, your passion to engage our generation of leaders is encouraging! Thanks for your time.
I think one key is for young people (all of us, actually) to realize that "your world is not THE world." Inner cities here in the U.S. and 3rd world countries are two great opportunities to open our eyes to the poverty in our world (and how blessed we are), as well as see the change that Christ makes in lives. There's nothing like seeing it firsthand to get you hooked and make you want to see more of it!
Also, my personal vision is for larger churches like ours that has a wealth of talent to give a boost to new and/or struggling churches with a week-long or even weekend effort.
Posted by: Josh Lewis | May 01, 2008 at 03:15 PM
I'll be the "youth" voice today.
Jeff, what the primary issue is is that we have two very different sets of "young people", with two very different mindsets. Your 18,19,20somethings have a desire to impact the world around them possibly more than ever before. Organizations like Big Event prove this: in one city 10,400 college students teamed up to take care of their community on a Saturday. Your older young people want to affect change, we're just not presented with very many opportunities that are conducive to funding and available time.
Your second set of young people are the ones who haven't even graduated high school yet. The issue with this new culture is egocentric-ism, and we're all partly to blame. The world around us is changing rapidly, but we've been so anxious to protect them from the dangers in our own backyard that we've shielded them from understanding what it's like to not be so blessed.
I feel like what needs to be addressed is how to combine these two groups into a Global Missions Team.
Now that I've identified problems, here are the ideas:
-Start small. As important as Global Missions is, you can't learn to reach the world if you can't talk to the kid you see every day on the bus. Kids need to get back involved in things like City House - home grown projects that help young people just like ourselves. Making friends at places like Tupelo's falls into this category.
-Join in on projects like Habitat for Humanity, which are bigger, nation-wide, and youth driven. When young people realize that they can accomplish something great, their ambition just gets bigger.
-Move out to the world. Places like El Salvador, Russia, the Philippines, etc.
The reason I think this will work is that while our trip to El Salvador was phenomenal, it's easy to come back and feel like your "missions mindset" doesn't have a place in the States or in your hometown. After all, no one needs anything here, right? (kidding, really.)
Teaching our young people to first reach out to those around them (and then expounding upon that principle) builds a Missions culture, and something that they'll pass down to their kids. The "missions mindset" has to be developed before we can ever hope to globally impact our world.
I hope this helps, and that you enjoy the rest of your conference!
Posted by: Jessica Reynolds | May 02, 2008 at 05:45 PM